More than halfway through the year, the wobbly state of the New York City economy is coming into focus.
Only one industry — health care — has been a bright spot in an otherwise sluggish job market, but even it is facing trouble. Across many sectors, including major industries like finance, hiring is down so far this year or has slowed substantially as companies confront economic uncertainty and rising prices from tariffs.
“It’s shocking how quickly the slowdown has been,” said Gregory E. DeFreitas, an economics professor at Hofstra University and the director of its Center for the Study of Labor and Democracy. “I do think it’s just the beginning.”
Here is a closer look at the city’s economy and how it compares with other large cities.
Where are new jobs being added?
Private companies in New York City have added just 5,079 jobs so far this year, the slowest positive job growth during the first seven months of any year since 1995, according to the city’s Office of Management and Budget. At this point last year, employers had added more than 68,000 jobs.
One industry that is booming is health care. No other field has come close to creating as many jobs — 41,000 this year. Since the beginning of 2020, the health sector has added more than 250,000 jobs.
But in recent years, most new positions have not been among doctors and nurses but rather among home health aides who are paid poorly — about $32,400 a year. And growth in the industry could cool.
Mr. Trump’s tax cuts and spending law will slash roughly $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade, which will reduce revenue for hospitals and could cause 1.5 million New Yorkers to lose their health coverage.
New York City would bear the brunt of the cuts in the state. The governor’s office said the law could lead to a reduction of 32,571 jobs in the city’s health sector, with about half of them in hospitals.
“The last remaining source of robust job growth is really under threat,” Professor DeFreitas said.
Office jobs are shrinking.
Few things symbolize New York City more than the office towers clustered in Manhattan. They are occupied by the largest and most valuable companies in the city. Yet, office-going jobs are on the decline.
The industries that make up office-going positions include finance and insurance (banks and investors), information (media and publishing) and professional business services (law firms, architects and accountants). Together, they employ more than 1.5 million people.
Today, there are roughly 15,500 fewer office jobs than at the start of 2025. At this point last year, about 19,100 office jobs had been created, according to the city’s labor data.
The jobs are important for the city’s economy because they tend to pay well — an average of $261,550 a year — and offer better health benefits to its employees. Personal income taxes on their large salaries and bonuses make up a substantial share of the tax revenue collected by the state and the city. (Taxes paid by Wall Street workers account for 19 percent of the state’s tax collections.)
Emily Eisner, chief economist at the nonpartisan Fiscal Policy Institute, said the job declines were “a big deal.”
Business owners are becoming pessimistic.
A survey of business leaders in early August by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed that companies in New York City and the broader region, including Northern New Jersey and southwestern Connecticut, have become increasingly pessimistic about the economic outlook in the coming months.
More than half of respondents said that the business climate was worse than normal as they faced higher prices and disruptions in the supply chain.
Many business leaders said they anticipated declines in employment over the next six months.
Other large metro areas have lost jobs.
So far, the labor market in New York City is holding up better than its peers on the West Coast.
Employers in the greater Los Angeles area have shed about 6,400 jobs this year, according to jobs data from California’s Employment Development Department. (The jobs numbers, like those in New York City, have been adjusted for seasonal variations, taking into account normal hiring fluctuations.)
In the Bay Area, payrolls have shrunk by nearly 14,000 positions in 2025.
What about millionaires?
The status of wealthy New Yorkers — whether they are leaving or staying — has been the subject of debate for years.
That’s because millionaires, who account for just 1 percent of New York City’s taxpayers, pay a large share of all personal income taxes collected: about 40 percent.
Nearly a quarter of the city’s tax revenue comes from personal income taxes.
Some politicians, business leaders and trade groups claimed that millionaires were leaving after Mr. Trump’s first-term tax cuts, and then again during the pandemic and, most recently, that they would leave if Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor, was elected.
Recent data on migration trends and millionaire-dollar earners is not yet available, so it is unclear if New York City has gained or lost millionaires over the past two and a half years.
But according to an analysis by the Fiscal Policy Institute, in 2020 and 2021, at the height of the pandemic, millionaires and other high-income earners did leave New York City at a higher rate than all other income groups, spurred by their ability to work remotely.
That migration trend reverted to prepandemic rates in 2022, the group said.
And even as New York City had some millionaires move elsewhere from 2020 to 2022, the city added many other new high earners who reported incomes greater than $1 million.
About 70,000 people earning $1 million were living in New York State in 2022, with half of them living in New York City. The number of millionaire earners in New York doubled from 2010 to 2022.
“When you are talking about how we are going to deliver great services, what better way to fund them than to ensure that our share of millionaires is growing,” said Andrew Rein, president of the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission, a fiscal watchdog that recently released a report on millionaires in the city and state.
Matthew Haag is a Times reporter covering the New York City economy and the intersection of real estate and politics in the region.
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